Apheresis therapy is a treatment method that removes autoantibodies from peripheral blood via extracorporeal circulation to control autoimmune disorders and improve pathological conditions. Apheresis therapy has already been performed to treat dilated cardiomyopathy in the United States (U.S.) and Europe, particularly in Germany. However, the effectiveness of apheresis therapy reportedly varies depending on the case. Thus, it has been attempted to predict the effectiveness prior to treatment using cultured rat cardiomyocytes (Staudt A. et al., J Am Coll Cardiol. 44(4): 829-836, 2004).
In these attempts, however, the preparation of cultured rat cardiomyocytes has been technically complicated, and the cost effectiveness and reproducibility have also been problematic. The assay method using chicken fertile eggs, an alternative to the above method, has not been performed for predicting therapeutic effectiveness.